Taking the housing market into consideration, if you own a home you may be thinking of whether to remodel or tear down and rebuild. In a Networx article, Laura Foster-Bobroff suggests looking at important factors such as structural weaknesses. “Over the years, changes in structure may have been implemented without adding additional structural support. Also, it’s common to find beams that have been cut into in order to accommodate upgrades in electrical and heating systems, compromising structural integrity,” she said.

Unless you have a major electrical problem, you may want to wait and “bundle” several jobs together before you call an electrician. One Denver electrical company, Coffman and Companies, suggests on their website “You’ll find having the electrician attend to several smaller needs in one visit much more cost effective.” The company also suggests in selecting an electrical contractor to look for a flat rate as opposed to hourly. “Contractors with low hourly rates may add on separate fees or take longer to get the job done to offset the lower rate,” they state.

If you are looking to remodel your kitchen, you can consolidate your purchasing efforts and support a worthy cause. Laura Foster-Bobroff, in a networx article describes a number of ways to simplify a kitchen remodeling project. One method to simplify the process is to shop at one retailer for all your supplies and appliances. You can save time, effort, and sometimes money. Also, buying in bulk can put you in a better position to dicker on price. Even better, you can look for a business such as Habitat Restore in Houston “where you can support Habitat for Humanity while purchasing deeply discounted, like-new remodeling materials,” says Foster-Bobroff.

Curb appeal can make a big difference when you're trying to sell your home. The first impression that your house makes to approaching visitors will typically affect how they view the rest of the space. On Hometalk, Tom Kraeutler and Leslie Segrete from The Money Pit recently suggested that simply upgrading your front door will pay huge dividends. By adding a new, high quality entryway to your house, not only will it make the home look more appealling, but this simple change can add up to $24,000 in percieved value.

I think almost all of us have lamented about the amount of money we spend on electric and gas when we're not even in the house. Kathleen S. is leaving town for 5 months and wants to turn the heat down or extinguish the pilot light altogether in her hot water heater. She asked on Hometalk. Here's the answers she got: YaminiM LEED AP said: "I always lower the temperature instead of blowing the pilot out. I've heard a couple horror stories when an owner tried to light the pilot back again and it wouldn't light back again.

It's been a few years now after hurricane Katrina wrecked havoc along the Gulf Coast, but some lingering concerns are still alive. FEMA, in their efforts to provide temporary housing, purchased over 2.5 billion dollars worth of travel trailers and mobile homes. These trailers were quickly built and put into service. Later, after some time in these "temporary" structures, some people began to experience some ill-heath effects. Air quality monitoring found that elevated levels of formaldehyde were present in some of these trailers.

10. McMansions Clearly, one of the worst design trend of the last decade was the explosion of the McMansion. These bloated and larger than necessary homes cost more than anyone could ever imagine (mortgage crisis, anyone?). These monster homes use enormous amounts of energy to light, heat and cool. Some of these homes were of course designed to be as energy efficient as possible, but the energy footprint of a 5,000 sq. ft. home is always going to be larger than that of a 2,500 sq. ft. home all other things being equal.

Even mafia bosses aren't immune to foreclosure or creative reuse of their properties. These over-the-top, garish estates found their ways into the real estate listings. Despite the amount of money that flowed into theses properties, they ended up listed for less or siezed and sold. Larger than life, Al Capone was born in New York and took his dealings to Chicago where he ruled the underground until he was busted for tax evasion. One of Capone's homes is said to have been a beautiful Spanish style villa in Varadero, Cuba.